Yesterday, The Religion Teacher email list passed the 40,000 subscriber mark. It is hard to believe that many people sign up to get emails from me or that there have been almost 60,000 people total who have signed up if you count those that unsubscribed. Here are a few of the things that helped the…
The Learning Log
The Character Question: What do they want and why?
In an interview with James Altucher, bestselling author Brad Meltzer points out that the plot isn’t what captures the reader’s attention (or the author’s attention for that matter). What really counts is the motivation of the character. That’s what people care about. Meltzer asks himself about each character: What does my character want? Why? If…
The Smallest Possible Task
The second to last item on my Daily Review checklist was to “organize your desk,” which includes the very large stack of papers in my Inbox. My Inbox, inspired of course by David Allen’s book Getting Things Done, is where all of my incoming papers go so that I can process them and decide what…
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
“What does ‘abandon’ mean?” my daughter whispered to me during Palm Sunday Mass. A more popular translation of Psalm 22, which Jesus quotes on the cross, is “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” which he says in Aramaic, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (Mark 15:13). “Maybe even Jesus felt alone and scared to…
Getting in the Mood for Creativity
There is no such thing. The environment will never be quite right. Your emotional state is never going to be perfect. If you wait for inspiration, it is likely never going to come. Instead, push through. Show up, sit down, and type (SUSDAT). The magic happens most of the time after you show up. You…
